In an interview with NBC News' Peter Alexander, the Republican presidential nominee rejected the idea that he's failed to connect with voters anxious over issues like high unemployment and the struggling economy.

"We're going to win. There is no question in my mind. We're going to win," Romney told NBC on Monday in Colorado, where he's campaigning. "The polls go up, polls go down. There've been some weeks I am ahead, some weeks I am behind. You know, all these states that voted for Barack Obama the last time, right now the majority of people in those states are saying that they don't want to vote for Barack Obama. My job is to make sure they understand what I stand for, they understand the path forward I would take. If I do that well, I'll be elected president, and I expect to do it well."

Romney talked to NBC News at the airport in Denver just before flying to a rally in Pueblo. His campaign scheduled a round of last-minute interviews with the three major television networks—ABC, CBS and NBC—to allow Romney to respond to Obama's Sunday interview with CBS' "60 Minutes."

"I can't imagine saying something like the assassination of ambassadors is a bump in the road," Romney said, referring to the death of Chris Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, who was killed on Sept. 11. "They represent events that are spinning out of the kind of influence we'd like to have. We're at the mercy [of] events rather than shaping the events in the Middle East."

Asked by NBC if he really believed "in his heart of hearts" that Obama was referring to Stevens and other Americans killed in the Arab unrest and not to policy, Romney didn't back down.

"When the president was speaking about 'bumps in the road,' he was talking about the developments in the Middle East and that includes an assassination. It includes a Muslim brotherhood individual becoming President of Egypt. It includes Syria being in tumult. It includes Iran being on the cusp of having nuclear capability. It includes Pakistan being in commotion," Romney said.

"There are extraordinary events going on in the Middle East, and considering those events—either one of them or all of them collectively—as 'bumps in the road' shows a person who has a very different perspective about world affairs and the perspective I have. I think this is a time for America to exert leadership, and this is not something that we are doing in the Middle East."